Recently seven of my images – all of the ones I submitted! – have been awarded in Inspiration Photographers competition. Inspiration Photographers is an association of best wedding, family and portrait photographers and filmmakers in the world! Each of my photos received either ‘Exceptional’ or ‘Masterpiece’ ratings. I’m so happy that my purely documentary family photography work resonates with so many people and colleagues. Thank you! Inspiration Photographers AwardsUnposed family photography ..read more

Natalia de Barbaro ’s book ‘Przędza’ is already available. Natalia, both in person and through her writing, is like spa for my soul and I can’t wait to get my own copy of the book when I travel to Poland this week! Here are a few of the photos we created together during a photo session in January organised by Wydawnictwo Agora. It was a great, time with a beautiful – inside and out – person. Thank you Natalia. Natalia de Barbaro, ‘Przędza’ Książka Natalii de Barbaro „Przędza” jest już w sprzedaży – dzisiaj premiera online! Natalia – czy to w kontakcie osobistym czy też poprzez jej książki – je ..read more

In January I had the privilege to photograph Natalia de Barbaro – an amazing author and the woman who inspired and guided me, in more ways than one, to take a huge leap of faith and redesign my life, for her upcoming second book ‘Przędza’ (‘Yarn’). We met at her home on the outskirts of Kraków, Poland. The moment I saw this window I also saw this picture in my head. It is a variation on the theme of weaving – dreaming up and creating a life for ourselves that we really want to live, a personal world which we want to inhabit. It shows Natalia the way I see her – a wise and kind sorceress, a wom ..read more

“Your photos have been published in a magazine”. What an amazing thing for a documentary photographer to read! As a family photographer based in London but photographing all over the world, including in my native Poland, I love being able to reach new people in this way. It felt amazing to read this but even better to be able to say his to my clients, who trusted me to document their lives. Now they can see themselves, the families they have created, their love, celebrated in this way, on six pages of an actual paper magazine! A feature article with my images has just been published in the J ..read more

As a London-based child and family documentary photographer I absolutely love capturing natural, candid moments in an artistic way. I have been thinking how to caption this, something interesting, original… Best Documentary Family Photographer in the UK The only thing I have managed to come up with is: Yyyyeeeeeaaaahhhh!!!! Throughout the year I received 10 individual image awards and two story awards! All that added up to: #1 UK Photographer of the Year #1 UK Storyteller of the Year #6 Photographer in the World Top Ten Family Documentary Photographers in the World And you know what? It feels ..read more

Recently I was interviewed for This is Reportage Family podcast. It was fun talking with Alan but I still haven’t mustered the courage to listen to it! SO if you do, please let me know how it went Here is where you can listen to it: This is Reportage Family website: https://thisisreportage.com/podcast-episode-95-this-is-agata-szymanowicz/ iTunes/Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/95-this-is-agata-szymanowicz/id1486156622?i=1000543592721 Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/episode/6zpenIBECT2fBLjnrLFTzN?si=fb2237e478da4fde Google Podcasts at https://www.google.com/podcast ..read more

Documentary family photographer award winning image This image was taken at the beginning of the pandemic, during the first lockdown. I had managed to order a garden swing only days before the whole country ground to a halt, and it kept us all sane for the next three months. My kids – almost three and almost seven at that time – were using it daily and it provided us all with a much-needed respite from the failures of home-schooling and just being stuck in our four walls. At the beginning of the lockdown, I sat and wrote down some priorities for myself: –      &nb ..read more

Candid family photographer in Central London We are a bilingual Polish-English family living in London. There are some well-documented advantages of bilingualism. It’s supposed to positively impact kids’ creativity, cultural awareness, social and listening skills and overall cognitive development. All these are great but for me, as a mother of bilingual, Polish-English kids, the best thing is when one of my children says something embarrassing and totally inappropriate in public and no one can understand that except me. My personal, real life examples, include: “Mummy, this gentleman is pregna ..read more

As a family fine art portrait photographer, one thing I love most about photographing my London clients is learning more about them. Getting a glimpse into their lives, a sense of what kind of parents, and people, they may be. It is a little like peaking in form a dark street through a window into a well-lit family kitchen. I can’t see the whole house, or the whole day this family had. Only a small frame in time and space. But that one frame is so interesting and inspiring! Child portrait photographer London Here is one such a frame, a window into a life of one of my clients (turned friend ..read more

Mum and baby portrait – London family photographer “It was during one of the most traumatic experiences of my life when I realised what being a parent truly meant to me. I was in hospital over the Christmas and New Year period and then some. My son was just two and my daughter four. I was in a lot of pain even with the strong painkillers but could navigate it mentally due to my experience of the births of my two children. This was a fortuitous side effect of being a mother in this scenario; learning to lean into the experience and not to fight it. But it was a difficult time for me, not only b ..read more